Obstacle Courses 2

Once again, I seem to have my finger on the city's pulse or, at least, some pretty good ESP for what's going to be on the Sunday edition of O Globo. I was having my coffee and pão canoa na chapa (which translates to a French roll reduced to its crust, buttered, and toasted...scrumptious stuff!) and reading the paper this morning when I came across an article about urban chaos in Rio. And one of the subjects was, you guessed, parking on the sidewalks. It turns out that the iron posts I mentioned below are routinely sawed off or broken (?) at the base and the concrete pillars are somehow demolished (maybe someone comes with a sledgehammer in the middle of the night?).


These two pictures I took yesterday in my neighborhood show perfectly good examples of how far people go in their efforts to keep cars where they belong, that is, on the street or inside parking lots. Apparently (at least according to the newspaper) it's a losing battle, due to a widespread urban pathological condition called "so what if it's illegal."